If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefoxas your Browser.0930-1500 KENYA TIMENormal Board - The Whole shebangPrompt Board Next day settlementExpert Board All you need re an Individual stock.

As my Post colleague Colby Itkowitz wrote, “Pelosi emerged from themeeting not some wilted flower, but a symbol of a woman who doesn’thave time for male posturing. ... Pelosi kept her composure throughoutthe charade, continually trying to bring the conversation back to aplace where actual dialogue could occur.”

In a court hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Justice WilliamEhrcke granted C$10 million (5.90 million pounds) bail to Meng, whohas been jailed since her arrest on Dec. 1. The courtroom erupted inapplause when the decision was announced. Meng cried and hugged herlawyers.

Among conditions of her bail, the 46-year-old executive must wear anankle monitor and stay at home from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Five friendspledged equity in their homes and other money as a guarantee she willnot flee.

You will recall that Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping enjoyed a muchanticipated ''Truce'' Dinner at the G20 in Buenos Aires and quaffed aCatena Zapata Nicolas Malbec [2014] wine with their sirloin steaks andfinished it all off with caramel rolled pancakes, crispy chocolate andfresh cream, a dinner that ran over by 60 minutes and one where thedinner Guests broke out into spontaneous applause thereafter.

At the very moment that the G2 Presidents were stuffing their gills,it has transpired that some 7,000 miles away, Canadian Authoritieswere making the arrest of Wanzhou Meng, chief financial officer ofHuawei Technologies Co. at the request of US Authorities. The U.S. isseeking the extradition of Wanzhou Meng after convincing Canada toarrest her on Dec. 1. Canada confirmed she was in custody shortlyafter the Globe and Mail reported she had been arrested in connectionwith violating sanctions against Iran. Meng is the daughter of thefounder of Huawei, a national champion and deeply embedded in XiJinping's China Inc. Bloomberg said ''While the U.S. routinely asksallies to extradite drug lords, arms dealers and other criminals,arresting a major Chinese executive like this is rare -- if notunprecedented''

“This is sending a signal that there is a new game” said DennisWilder, a former CIA China analyst and senior director for Asia at theNational Security Council under President George W. Bush.

Canada will face “grave consequences” if it does not immediatelyrelease Meng Wanzhou [Xinhua]. The Vancouver real estate market whichboomed for decades on the back of Chinese demand looks horriblyexposed.

Canada’s Foreign Ministry said it has been unable to contact Canadianbusinessman Michael Spavor since he notified the government that hewas being questioned by Chinese authorities.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland earlier told reportersthat a second Canadian citizen could be in trouble in China.Authorities in China are already holding former diplomat MichaelKovrig, who was detained on Monday.

Hours after the attack yesterday, before officials labeled it an actof terror, experts like @JcBrisard already knew a key detail: Thegunman named Cherif Chekatt appeared not just on France’s S List ofpeople believed to pose a security threat but also on its FSPRT list.

Here’s one interesting takeaway: There are over 20,000 names in thisdatabase of radicalized individuals in France alone. According to@JcBrisard, some 10% of them live in the provincial department wherethe Strasbourg Christmas market is located. Or some 2,000 ppl.

It went through total agony, through fire and unimaginable pain, butin the end, it won. It almost won. And the victory will, most likely,be final in 2019.Syria is winning, because the only alternative would be slavery andsubservience, and that is not in the lexicon of the people here. TheSyrian people won because they had to win, or face the inevitabledemise of their country and collapse of their dream of a Pan-Arabhomeland.Syria is winning, and hopefully, nothing here, in the Middle East,will be the same again. The long decades of humiliation of the Arabsare over. Now everyone ‘in the neighborhood’ is watching. Noweverybody knows: The West and its allies can be fought and stopped;they are not invincible. Tremendously brutal and ruthless they are,yes, but not invincible

“On the way from the airport to the place where Fayulu was going toaddress the crowd the police began to throw tear gas, hot water andanother blue liquid at the population,” activist Jean-Pierre Mutebatold Reuters, refering to Tuesday’s events.“Personally, I saw two people seriously injured by bullets.”The Congolese Association for Access to Justice (ACAJ) said two peoplewere killed in the violence on Tuesday, 43 people were injured and 27Fayulu supporters were arrested.Opposition coalition Lamuka, which is backing Fayulu, said the policecrackdowns “show clearly that President Kabila and his team realisethat ... they are going to lose the elections”.

I flicked the channels and came across a report from the Congo, whereopposition presidential hopeful Moise Katumbi had been leading thestreet against a third term for Kabila. ‘’Birthday-Boy’’ PresidentJoseph Kabila is constitutionally barred from running for a thirdterm, and Katumbi has set out his stall now and is a formidableadversary. In fact, the numbers were building and Katumbi must havebeen thinking this might just turn into a Tsunami. President Kabila,however, out- witted Katumbi by removing him from the street and theCongo entirely. This might well prove a cleverly administeredtechnical knock-out. Of course, the precursor was the Burkina uprisingin Ouagadougou in 2014 which terminated ‘’beautiful’’ Blaise Compare.The street is a tinderbox and it has become a major area of(political) contestation across the continent.Conclusions

“Today we produce locally 10 million metric tonnes of paddy riceannually. And we are importing only two percent of our riceconsumption now,” Osinbajo said.“Investments in milling capacity has risen astronomically since then,with one investor putting a million tonnes of milling capacity intothe market.“Carlos Farms, a Mexican fruit and vegetable investor, had initiallyplanned to grow bananas and pineapples for export; until he discoveredthat he was making more money selling his bananas locally at $3dollars a kilogramme, for what he would have been paid only a dollarper kg in Europe.“With a substantial percentage of the world’s arable land and overhalf of that uncultivated, it is becoming clearer that the world willbe looking to Africa, and Nigeria in particular, as its food basket.

At a news conference this month, Nigeria’s septuagenarian head ofstate, Muhammadu Buhari, sought to refute a bizarre claim that hascome to dominate his bid for another term leading Africa’s mostpopulous nation: that he has been replaced by a body double or clone.“On the issue of whether I’ve been cloned or not…,” said theramrod-straight former general, “it’s the real me, I assure you."Several high-profile Nigerians—including a former minister, a stategovernor and one of the country’s most popular evangelicalpreachers—have in recent weeks claimed Mr. Buhari, nicknamed “JohnnyWalker” for his frequent months-long trips abroad for medicaltreatment, has died and been replaced by a lookalike.Social-media posts alleging the president is in fact a Sudanese bodydouble called “Jubril” have been shared and viewed more than half amillion times. Self-styled genetics experts have published papersasserting the president has been cloned.Nigerians are scouring through photos to see if they can detectchanges to the president’s distinctive nose or cleft ear. Enterprisingtraders in Lagos have begun selling “Where’s Buhari?” T-shirts.Thousands of Nigerians have shared a scene from the 1997 movie“Face/Off” starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to show how a deadMr. Buhari’s face could have been transplanted to a body double. Thescandal has even reached U.S. late-night television, with Jimmy Kimmelon Tuesday joking that Mr. Buhari was a clone before launching into askit about the cloning of his co-host, Guillermo.The rumors, which appear to have no basis in fact, evolved fromspeculation over Mr. Buhari’s health after he took a five-monthmedical leave in London last year for an illness never publiclyidentified. Rumors he had been replaced by a Sudanese doppelgangerhave been supercharged by social media, doctored photos and Nigeria’shighly partisan and underfunded press.The rumor mongering comes at a time when academic reports say fakenews is a greater scourge in Africa than in the U.S. or Europe. ANovember survey by eight South African universities found that Africanaudiences face a higher degree of exposure to misinformation andcontribute, often knowingly, to its spread. A quarter of Nigerianssurveyed said they had shared stories they knew were false.Those likes, shares or retweets can be lethal. Nigerian police saidthat false information and incendiary images on Facebook havecontributed to more than a dozen recent killings in Plateau State, anarea beset by ethnic violence.Whatsapp, the messaging platform owned by Facebook, is fundingresearch into whether the platform is being abused ahead of Nigeria’selections, which will be in February.The Buhari rumors are resurrecting a decades-long fixation on leaders’health—and identity—that has periodically upended Nigeria’s politics.In 2010, then-President Umaru Yar’Adua disappeared for four monthsafter secretly flying to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. Thousandsprotested the lack of an explanation. He died shortly after hisreturn.Abubakr Shekau, the murderous leader of jihadist group Boko Haram, hasallegedly been killed by the military several times, only for him oran impersonator to appear in promotional media, according to Nigeria’sgovernment. Mr. Shekau or a stand-in has said in YouTube videos thatreports of his death are greatly exaggerated.In a piece of death-defying irony, the rumor of President Buhari’sbeing replaced by a Sudanese imposter appears to have been started byNnamdi Kanu, the leader of a separatist movement who was himselfrumored have been killed—and replaced by a body double—during aNigerian military operation last year.In one instance, Mr. Kanu shared two images of Mr. Buhari, onereversed, to allege that the president, who is right-handed, was usinghis left hand—supposedly proof of a body double. Mr. Kanu didn’trespond to requests for concrete evidence.Even the identity of Mr. Buhari’s wife has come into question. A weekago, Nigerian intelligence officers arrested Amina Mohammed, who theysay had sneaked into the presidential residence and sought to useAisha Buhari’s name to extort 150 million naira ($414,000) from aLagos-based businessman, according to a secret-service spokesman. At anews briefing, Ms. Mohammed—dubbed “fake first lady” by localmedia—shouted: “It is a lie.”In the Nigerian capital of Abuja’s cacophonous Wuse market, amidstalls selling spicy jollof rice and brightly patterned waxed fabric,the identity of the president is a matter of fierce debate.“I’m still confused,” said Obinna Elekwachi, a trader who sellsclothes. “Although he denied he is Jubril from Sudan, I’m stillconfused.”Kabiru Abubakar, a watch seller, shot back: “Buhari is alive—hale andhearty. This is a lie from the pit of hell and must be disregarded.”The debate echoed the “birther” campaign once backed by PresidentTrump that spread unsubstantiated allegations former President BarackObama was born in Kenya.Last week, Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba made his first appearancesince falling ill nearly six weeks ago, in a video shared by thepresidency from his medical leave in Morocco. With his exact conditionand whereabouts unknown, rumors had swirled that he was incapacitatedor dead.When Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika died in 2013, his alliesconnected his corpse to life-support machines and flew it to a SouthAfrican hospital, in a piece of political theater designed to stop hisdeputy Joyce Banda from taking powerZimbabwe’s former President Robert Mugabe was widely reported to havedied in 2016, when he was 92, after the presidential plane carryinghim made a diversion to Dubai. Mr. Mugabe reappeared in Harare thenext week to say: “It’s true I was dead. But I resurrected as I alwaysdo.”He added: “Once I get back to my country, I am real.”

The impending retirement of Glencore’s copper kingpin Telis Mistakidismarks the start of a generational shift at the top of the world’s mostpowerful commodity trader.While some senior executives have left the Swiss-based group since its2011 stock market flotation, none of the inner circle surrounding thecompany’s workaholic boss Ivan Glasenberg have left — until now.The departure later this year of 56-year-old Mr Mistakidis signalsbreak-up of the so-called billionaire boys’ club, which builtrisk-hungry Glencore into the commodity industry’s dominant and mosttalked-about company, according to analysts, bankers and investors.The leadership changes come as Glencore faces a string of legalchallenges, including a US Department of Justice investigation intopossible corruption and bribery that has put its business model underthe microscope.“They are facing attacks on multiple fronts,” said Anneke VanWoudenberg, executive director of Rights and Accountability inDevelopment, a campaign group.“This has got to be creating headaches. They are all focused on thesame central question: fraud, corruption and misreporting. The wholebusiness model is coming under question.”Mr Glasenberg would not be drawn last week on any connection betweenMr Mistakidis’s retirement and investigations facing the company overits activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorestand most corrupt countries in the world.

“He’s decided to retire and pass on the baton to the next generation,”Mr Glasenberg said. “None of us expect to stay here forever,” headded.But analysts have questioned the management changes.“It’s one of those where you don’t know whether this is being done toappease the regulators, and has been done with their consultation, orif they’re just trying it out hoping to get them off their backs,”said Ben Davis, an analyst at Liberum.Others say Glencore, which has an appetite for risk that few of itspeers can stomach, is doing what it always does and moving quickly toget in front of a problem.“They’re trying to be on the front foot, they’re the most reactivecompany in our sector,” one banker said. “When things happen theyreact very quickly.”One such example was in late 2015 when, following a dive in its shareprice to a record low because of growing concerns about its ability tomanage a huge debt pile, Glencore moved swiftly to strengthen itsbalance sheet, shelving its dividend, selling assets and raising moneyfrom shareholders.This time, it is the looming investigations by the DoJ and Canada’sOntario Securities Commission, which have rocked the company. In July,Glencore said it had been subpoenaed by the DoJ for documentsconcerning its business activities in the Democratic Republic ofCongo, Venezuela and Nigeria going back to 2007.Canada’s OSC is looking into accounting irregularities at Glencore’ssubsidiary Katanga Mining, which owns a copper and cobalt mine in theDRC that Mr Mistakidis previously managed.In addition, prosecutors in Brazil recently announced that Glencore,as well as its rivals Vitol and Trafigura, were under investigation onsuspicion of paying bribes to employees of state-controlled oilcompany Petrobras in exchange for contracts.

These investigations have weighed on Glencore’s share price, which isdown 29 per cent this year.Glencore grew out of Marc Rich & Co, whose eponymous founder wasregarded as the godfather of modern commodity trading.Since 2002, when Mr Glasenberg took the helm, it has been run by atight-knit group of traders who have been at the company since the1990s.The most senior lieutenants are Daniel Maté, head of lead and zinctrading; Tor Peterson, head of coal trading; Alex Beard, head of oil;and Mr Mistakidis.They remain fiercely loyal to Mr Glasenberg, in part for hisrealisation that Glencore needed to expand beyond pure commoditytrading into mining as commodity markets became more transparent andtechnology made information more widely available.Glencore became one of the world’s biggest miners in 2013 when itpurchased Xstrata in an acrimonious deal.Mr Glasenberg also made them fantastically wealthy after Glencore’s$60bn flotation in 2011. Mr Mistakidis and Mr Maté have retainedequity stakes worth about £1.2bn each.“The management has been here a long time since the float, even thoughpeople thought since 2011 that a lot of the senior executives wouldleave,” said Mr Glasenberg. “They haven’t . . . and there comes a timewhen the next generation needs to take over.”Some think the management changes announced by Glencore last week alsoreflect its evolution from a commodity trader to a company that makesmost of its money by extracting raw materials from the earth.Glencore named Peter Freyberg, a former Xstrata executive, as its headof mining, a new position that reports directly to Mr Glasenberg. Italso confirmed the retirement of Stuart Cutler, the veteran head offerroalloys trading, and Mark Catton, the head of liquefied naturalgas.“What you’re seeing is a change in Glencore’s structure that mirrorsits evolution from a private trading company to one of the world’slargest mining companies,” said Paul Gait, analyst at BernsteinResearch.“If anything, the turbulence of the last year has forced investors toask more questions about the company, about management procedures;whereas before people were focused on the dollars and cents and tonnesout of the ground. Now there’s an increased awareness that these kindsof things have become just as important,” added Mr Gait.As the regulatory investigations progress, bankers say attention islikely to turn to Mr Beard, who is in charge of oil trading in Nigeriaand Venezuela — two key areas of the DoJ investigation. In a recentreport, analysts at Barclays raised the prospect of Glencore exitingso-called agency trading in its oil business.During last week’s update with investors, Mr Glasenberg hinted atfurther senior management changes, adding there was a “very good benchof people ready to take over”.“So over the next two to three years, you may get another change, butyou may also get one or two changes. I don’t know,” he said.Above all, investors are most interested in who will eventuallyreplace Mr Glasenberg, who turns 62 in January and plans to retire inthe next three to five years if he has found a suitable replacement.Mr Glasenberg says he has a provisional shortlist of candidates, someof whom are running business lines, and that the ideal replacementwould look much like himself and be about 45-years-old.That effectively rules out the current crop of top executives, butputs those like Gary Nagle, the hard-charging South African who wasnamed as the head of Glencore’s power coal business last week, intothe spotlight.Indeed, many bankers think Glencore’s next chief executive will haveto come from the mining side of the business rather than trading.“I’ve got my eye on a few guys,” Mr Glasenberg told journalists lastweek. “There’s three to four guys who could potentially be there.”

DRC president defends Glencore and former partner GertlerJoseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, defendedGlencore and its former partner Dan Gertler, both of which have facedUS allegations of corruption linked to their operations in the centralAfrican country, writes Tom Wilson in Kinshasa.Mr Gertler, who partnered Glencore in Congo for a decade, wassanctioned by the US government last year for alleged bribery, whileGlencore in June said the US Department of Justice had requestedinformation relating to its dealings in Congo and two other countries.“I do not want to pronounce myself on any [US justice] issues withGlencore and other companies,” Mr Kabila said.“They haven’t been found at fault with our own system and if at allthere is any problem with the system in America we are very much freeand open to discuss these issues with them. They’ve not done that asyet,” he said.Mr Gertler first met Mr Kabila in 1997, four years before he becamepresident, and the two men struck up a lasting friendship that helpedMr Gertler turn a diamond trading business into a mining empire withstakes in copper, cobalt, gold, iron and oil projects across theCongo.He teamed up with Glencore in 2007 and was an investor in two of theirmining projects in the country until the Swiss commodity traderacquired his stakes last year, 10 months before he was slapped with USsanctions for allegedly making corrupt payments to Mr Kabila — acharge both men deny.“I have known Dan Gertler since 1997,” Mr Kabila said. “He came,wanted to do business in the Congo, has been doing business in theCongo [and] definitely we want him to continue to do business in theCongo.”In power for 17 years, Mr Kabila is preparing to stand down afterlandmark elections this month, but says he has no plans to leavepolitics.Glencore’s relationship with the Congolese government has been morecomplicated. The trading-cum-mining giant is Congo’s biggest investor,having spent more than $6.5bn in the country, but has faced adifficult 12 months fighting battles over a joint venture with thestate-owned miner and a new mining code, which raised taxes.“I believe it has been on and off,” Mr Kabila said of his relationshipwith Glencore.“Glencore was one of those companies that didn’t want to see a changein the mining code,” said Mr Kabila. “Of course, they came up withother proposals which we did not accept and we adopted the miningcode. So it has been on and off but I hope that it will be constant aswe move forward.”The new legislation boosted royalties on most metals, increased taxesand cancelled a 10-year stability clause that should have protectedGlencore and other miners from complying with the changes until atleast 2028.Despite initial threats from Glencore and others to seek internationalarbitration to block the reforms, no such action has been taken todate and mining activity has continued, largely unchecked.“We believe that the mining companies were not paying sufficientlywhat was due to the state,” Mr Kabila said. “Since the mining codecame into effect the tendency is that we are going to multiply ourrevenues.”Mining revenue in the first nine months of the year has already morethan doubled to $1.21bn, compared with $489m a year earlier, accordingto the finance ministry.Glencore, which is one of the country’s biggest taxpayers, paid atotal of $1.1bn to the government in taxes, royalties and othercontributions in the two years from 2015 to 2017, in addition toseparate investments in healthcare, education and social developmentprojects, according to company filings.In a statement, Mr Gertler’s Fleurette Group said: “We are proud to berecognised as such a valuable contributor to the growth anddevelopment of the Democratic Republic of Congo.“As we have said many times we have always acted appropriately andwith integrity in all our dealings there. Our mission has always beento bring in valuable investment in the absence of others beingprepared to believe in the country, its people and its hugepotential.”

Barrick Gold Corp has made progress in talks with the Tanzaniangovernment to resolve a nearly 2-year-long tax dispute, but it ispremature to say a deal has been reached, a person familiar in thematter told Reuters on Wednesday.Government officials met last week with executives from Toronto-basedBarrick and Randgold Resources Ltd, which Barrick is acquiring, todiscuss the issue, said the source, who declined to be identified dueto the sensitivity of the talks.Acacia Mining, 63.9 percent owned by Barrick, is operating under a rawmineral export ban and faces a $190 billion tax bill from the Tanzaniagovernment.That meeting “appears to have gone well,” but there is “nothing inwriting,” said the source. “The next week is crucial.”Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Barrick had reached an agreementwith the government on a $300 million payment, which Acacia will makein installments, with terms under review by a Tanzanian tax workinggroup. It was unclear if the payment resolved outstanding tax issues.

Tanzania will build a $3 billion hydroelectric plant in a UNESCO worldheritage site under a contract announced on Wednesday involvingEgyptian companies despite concerns raised about the impact onwildlife.Tanzanian President John Magufuli, nicknamed “the bulldozer” for hisforceful leadership style, has pushed for the project to start despiteconcerns raised about the impact on the Selous Game Reserve.Known for its elephants, black rhinos and giraffes, the reserve covers50,000 square km and is one of the largest protected areas in Africa,according to UNESCO.The planned hydropower dam “puts protected areas of global importance,as well as the livelihoods of over 200,000 people who depend upon theenvironment, at risk,” the World Wildlife Fund conservation group saidin a report in July 2017.Officials at the WWF Tanzania office were not immediately available tocomment on Wednesday.Tanzania announced it had signed deals with Egypt’s El Sewedy ElectricCo and Arab Contractors to build the hydroelectric plant, a projectthat will more than double Tanzania’s power generation capacity.Energy Minister Medard Kalemani told state television the plant willhave an installed capacity of 2,115 megawatts, calling it “a very hugedam project”.“When we asked for financing for this project, the lenders refused togive us money but thanks to improved tax collection, we are able tofinance this project using our own resources,” Magufuli said.Monthly tax revenue has increased to an average of 1.3 trillionshillings ($566 million) per month under his administration from 850billion before he came to power in late 2015, Magufuli said.

The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) has kicked off thesearch for consultants to determine the viability of extractingminerals such as silica and lithium from geothermal fluids in arevenue diversification bid.The State-owned power producer in a tender notice Tuesday said theconsultant will help it assess the feasibility of extraction forcommercial use from the hot brines (geothermal hot waters) — the wastestream that geothermal power plants pump out of the ground.“Over the years KenGen has invested heavily in generation ofelectricity using geothermal energy. All the geothermal plants ownedby KenGen are single flash condensing type. The flashing processyields brine that contains mineral elements like Silica that couldhave commercial application,” it said.“Owing to this, KenGen invites expression of interest from eligiblefirms and entities to provide application research on mineralextraction from the geothermal brine.”Geothermal hot waters (brines) have been used for thousands of yearsfor mineral baths and to heat homes, greenhouses and furnish hot waterto local communities in certain areas of the world.KenGen earlier said that brine from its Olkaria fields contains about600-800 milligrammes (mg) of silica per kilogramme of the fluid and1.5 and 2mg per kilogramme of lithium.

Kevian Kenya owner Kimani Rugendo has hinted at plans of listing thefoods processor on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.The public listing, through an initial public offering (IPO), is partof Mr Rugendo’s succession strategy that will see Kenyans own a pieceof the multi-billion-shilling company which produces Afia and Pick n’Peel juices.“Succession is awaited and we will now call for an IPO. Be prepared,”said Mr Rugendo at a press briefing last week.The family business that began in 1991 with the production of bottledwater followed by fruit juices, sauces and soups in the early 2000s atits Thika and Nairobi plants has recorded rapid growth over the years.This led to its expansion at an estimated cost of Sh3 billion fundedthrough borrowing from an international lender.